


Remembering

by Luthien



Series: An Education [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The curtain flaps in the breeze, and Belle remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembering

**Author's Note:**

> This is an episode tag for 3x11 - Going Home, and follows on from the events of [Learning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1073356) and [Knowing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1090109).
> 
> There are a few lines of dialogue taken directly from the episode, and also a few other lines of dialogue taken from 1x12 - Skin Deep and 1x22 - A Land Without Magic. Obviously, these are not mine.

The curtain flaps in the early morning breeze.

Belle stretches against the mattress and slowly opens her eyes. It's still more dark than light at this hour, and she can only just make out the familiar bedroom furniture on the other side of the room, dark grey shapes against paler grey walls. Another dark shape – a hand shape – appears from beside her and enfolds her hand where it rests on top of the covers. Belle smiles as Rumpelstiltskin's fingers brush over the ring on her third finger. She squeezes his hand and presses a soft kiss against his bare shoulder.

She pulls her hand free and wriggles her fingers in the air. The ring is an unfamiliar weight, the gold band warm against her skin – and the promise the ring represents warm against her heart.

Belle smiles again, and rolls over onto her side. Rumpelstiltskin is waiting for her. She can't make out his features properly in the dim light, but she knows he's returning her smile even before their lips meet.

It's not the time for anything more than a kiss, after the night they've shared. It hasn't involved much in the way of sleep. They trade long, sleepy kisses for a while. Perhaps for a long while. Like the whole night, time is passing in a way that Belle can't seem to keep track of.

The curtain flaps in the morning breeze, stronger now, and the slats of the blind rattle against the window.

Belle ends the latest kiss and lifts her head. The blind rattles again. She sits up and is about to swing her legs over the edge of the bed when Rumple places a hand on her thigh.

"Don't move. I'll get it." He springs out of bed as he's never done before. Not in this land, anyway. That, together with the ring on her finger, tells Belle all she needs to know about his commitment to the future. To their combined future. He's no longer letting himself be weighed down by the burdens of the past.

Rumple closes the window easily. Unlike the windows in Belle's apartment, the ones in this house close soundlessly, and without putting up a fight first. He ties the curtains back and pulls the blind up partway. Belle squints, dazzled as the light hits her face. She holds out her arms, welcoming Rumple back to bed. He turns away from the window and grins as he sees her lying there. He looks at her speculatively for a moment, as if he's considering taking a flying leap back onto the bed, but as Belle watches, his grin becomes strained. The look in his eyes has turned sad – more than sad. His expression is hollow, bereft, and he's looking at her as if he's trying to memorise every bit of… No, worse. He's looking at her as if she's a beloved memory, something already gone and forever beyond his reach.

The golden light intensifies around him, so bright that Belle can hardly make out the shape of him. So bright that it hurts her eyes to look at him. Belle is frozen to the spot, arms still outstretched. She can't move anything except her eyes, and she keeps them fixed on Rumple, even though the golden light feels like it's burning right through them.

"I love you, Belle," Rumpelstiltskin says, and Belle wants to cry, but she can't even do that.

The light grows even brighter, and it's more than Belle can bear. She closes her eyes, just for a second, and-

~*~

The ragged banner flaps in the breeze, the lettering on it as faded as the memory of whatever it was that it had advertised, once upon a time.

Below it, half-hidden in the shadows of the alleyway, Rumpelstiltskin grasps Belle's shoulders and pushes her up against the brick wall. Belle squeaks in surprise as the back of her dress catches against the rough surface. Before she can make any other protest, Rumple's kissing her, roughly, his stubble rasping against her cheek.

"This is what you want, isn't it, Lacey?" he asks in a low, gravelly voice, breath hot against her throat, but he doesn't wait for an answer. He kisses her again and his hands leave her shoulders and move slowly down her sides. His touch is all firm purpose, lingering on every inch of her, mapping the shape of what's barely hidden beneath the scrap of clothing that hardly qualifies to be called a dress.

Belle wants to say, "Not here," and "Not now," and most of all she wants to point out that she's not Lacey, but his hands slip round to find her breasts, to cup them and squeeze the nipples between thumb and forefinger, just hard enough to hurt. A sharp stab of want forks through her and all Belle manages is a shaken sigh.

Rumple's lips turn up in a knowing smile. It's the sort of smile that Belle's never seen directed at her before – but Lacey has.

His hands leave her breasts, and slip down to find her hands. His fingers brush over the ring on her third finger. The touch doesn't feel deliberate, until he does it again. And again.

"What-" Belle begins, right before he kisses her again, trapping her wrists against the brick wall. Belle knows she shouldn't want this, and yet that doesn't stop her from moaning into the kiss or from shuddering as muscles clench around the sudden wetness between her legs. His lips leave hers, leave her panting, and he leans down, so that his stubbled cheek scrapes against her breasts. She wonders what he's doing but then she feels his hands on her thighs, right before they slip around to grab her arse. He hoists her higher up the wall, so high that her feet are no longer touching the ground, and holds her there.

He shouldn't be able to do this, shouldn't be strong enough, and yet she hasn't fallen. His chest is heaving, but Belle doesn't think it's solely to do with the effort of holding her there.

She can't move and she doesn't even care. All she cares about is whether or not he can keep her where she is long enough to position himself right where she wants him, where she's aching to be filled.

The sudden bright flash of car headlights startles them both. It's probably just a car turning in the adjacent street, but after several seconds the light still hasn't moved away. Belle squints down at Rumple. It's hard to make out his features, silhouetted by the light coming from behind him like that.

As she watches, the golden light intensifies around him, so bright that Belle can hardly make out the shape of him. So bright that it hurts her eyes to look at him. She knows what the expression on his face will be, though, knows that it's one that she's seen before – one that Lacey hasn't seen.

"You made me stronger," Rumple says, in a voice that makes Belle want to cry. It's too hard to keep looking. She closes her eyes, just for a second, and-

~*~

The too-long sleeves of Belle's borrowed hospital clothes flap in the chill pre-dawn breeze. She stops outside the only still-lit window in the street and hugs her coat more tightly to her as she looks up at the sign: she's found the place she's been seeking. She opens the shop door and glances up, startled, as a little bell tinkles to announce her arrival. There's no one to be seen here in the shop proper, but as she moves closer to the counter she notices a curtained doorway, and light shining out from beneath.

"Excuse me," she says, pushing back the curtain and stepping through into the back room. It's a cluttered room, a workroom, lit by a single small desk lamp on a high shelf. But of course Belle knows that. She's been here before. This is Rumple's shop, and there he is, standing with his back to her, his whole posture screaming that he has something to hide.

"I'm afraid the shop's close…" His voice trails off to nothing as he turns around and sees her standing there. He looks stunned, disbelieving, as though he's afraid that he's dreaming. Or, worse, that she's the beginning of a waking nightmare. He comes closer, leaning on his cane as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. His eyes are on her face, so focused that it's as if he can't look away, and he no longer looks as if he's afraid that he's dreaming. Now he just looks afraid.

Afraid of her? That doesn't make any sense. Belle holds out her arms to him, welcoming, but, instead of taking her in his arms and returning her hug, he stops just in front of her. He reaches out and takes her by the shoulder. He keeps hold of her for a long, silent moment, and then his grip tightens for a second, fingers digging into her through her clothes, before he lets her go.

"You're real. You're alive," he says wonderingly. The disbelief is fading from his eyes, but he still looks shocked.

"I was told that Mr Gold would protect me," she says, because she was told that, wasn't she? Once? On a night very like this one?

Rumple's expression… crumbles, like the façade of a worn out old building falling as it's demolished.

"Oh, yes," he says, his voice breaking on a sob as he finally takes her in his arms. "Yes, I'll protect you." And he buries his face against her hair as he holds her so tight that Belle can barely breathe. After a few moments, when she can still barely breathe and it's becoming clear that he's not going to let her go of his own volition, Belle pulls free.

He stares at her through eyes wet with unshed tears. He's let her go, reluctantly, but his hand remains clasped loosely around her upper arm and then slips down to find her hand. His fingers brush the ring on her finger before his hand closes around hers. His thumb starts stroking up and down her third finger slowly, almost absently.

"Are you Mr Gold?" she asks, because that's who he is when he's here, isn't it? Not Rumple. Mr Gold.

"I'm a villain," he says, and smiles, but it's not a happy smile. It's a terrible smile, wrecked in quite a different way from how his face looked just a moment ago when he said he'd protect her.

Belle doesn't know what to say to that. It's as if she can't say anything, as if she can't even move her lips – or any other part of her body. All she can do is watch as the golden light from the lamp on the shelf behind him fills the room, everything going brighter and brighter, intensifying around him. The golden light is so bright that Mr Gold is just a dark, Rumple-shaped object in front of her. So bright that it hurts her eyes to look at him.

She wants to cry and she doesn't even know why. Everything's confusion, except that her eyes feel like they're going to burn up with the brightness. She has to stop looking. She closes her eyes, just for a second, and-

~*~

The heavy drapes flap against the window as Belle shakes them, trying to pull them back out of the way. How many years is it since they've been touched, even by a breeze?

"What _are_ you doing?" Rumple asks, and when Belle looks down at him from her perch halfway up the ladder she sees that it is, indeed, Rumpelstiltskin and not Mr Gold.

"Opening these," she says, still struggling with the obstinately unmoving drapes. "It's almost Spring. We should let some light in." She gives the nearest curtain another good tug. "What did you do, nail them down?" she asks Rumple in exasperation.

"Yes," he says, sounding just offended enough that it might even be the truth.

His response makes Belle want to giggle, but she has work to do. She pulls at the curtain again and it still doesn't budge, so she puts as much strength as she can into the next tug. With a sickening tearing sound, the curtain comes right away from its moorings and Belle falls backwards off the ladder.

He catches her. Of course he catches her. He will always be there to catch her. Even so, the impact knocks the breath out of her and they stay like that for long seconds, Belle held safe against Rumpelstiltskin's heart as they stare at each other.

"Thank you," Belle says, not quite as soon as she gets her breath back.

Rumple drops her like a sack of potatoes – or as if she's just announced that she's a plague carrier – and steps back quickly.

"Thank you," Belle says again, as they both take a moment to brush themselves down and get rid of largely imaginary dust.

"It's no matter," Rumple mutters, straightening. He reminds her of a cat trying to regain its self-possession after going to sleep in the sun and falling off a window ledge. And it is sunny in here, sunny and bright now that the window is bare.

"I'll put the curtains back up," Belle promises.

"Ah," Rumpelstiltskin says. He's just turned away, as though about to return to his spinning wheel in the corner, but now he turns back to face her, though it takes another moment before he looks her in the eye. "There's no need. I'll get used to it."

Belle smiles at that, and it's her turn to look away from his face. She's surprised when he reaches out to her, palm up in something like supplication, and then the heat rushes up her neck and into her cheeks as he steps closer and takes her hand.

Belle doesn't know what to do, so she searches wildly for something to say. "Why did you want me here?" she asks. It is, of course, something that she's wondered about since the moment he first named her as his price, but she still wishes the words unsaid even before they've finished leaving her mouth. Now isn't the time, nor is here the place. Not yet.

"The place was filthy," he says, looking not at her, or at their joined hands – his thumb is tracing circles around the ring on her third finger now – but out the window.

"I think you were lonely. Any man would be lonely." Belle jams her lips together, hard. _Not now, not now,_ she silently berates herself. _Not yet._

"I'm not a man, I'm a villain," Rumple says, finally turning to look at her properly. The window is behind him now, the sun reflecting off the snow outside and shining in, so bright. So very bright. "And villains don't get happy endings."

Belle doesn't want to look at that expression on his face. Not again. She wants to say, "Not yet," to this, too, and not only "Not yet" but "Not ever." She can't utter a word. She can't move a muscle. As she watches, the golden light intensifies around him, so bright that Belle can hardly make out the shape of him. So bright that it hurts her eyes to look at him.

And then they're no longer in the Dark Castle. Instead, Belle's standing in the middle of the street in Storybrooke in her Storybrooke clothes, her ring hidden beneath a sturdy leather glove, and she's watching Rumpelstiltskin kill his father and save them all. She's watching Rumple sacrifice himself, and she won't close her eyes, not for a second, as the golden light of his magic takes them both. She wants to yell out, to make it stop, but she can't move, not at all, not until the light is gone and Pan's spell breaks.

Belle falls to her knees on the hard surface of the road and-

~*~

The curtain flaps in the early morning breeze.

Belle sits up in bed. "No!" she shouts, and looks around wildly. It takes a moment for her to realise that she is alone, just as she was when she fell into bed in this room last night. Her breath is coming fast and it takes effort to slow it down. Her low cut silk shift, the one that goes under the dress she was wearing the day she met Rumpelstiltskin, sticks unpleasantly to her clammy skin. And other bits of her are damp and suspiciously sticky. She needs a wash, badly, but for the moment she's grateful just to be able to lie back against the pillows and gather her thoughts.

The room around her is still and quiet, apart from the curtain flapping against the open window and the loose shutter rattling with the occasional stronger gust of wind. The quiet is soothing, and balm for her thoughts, which are anything but.

Is this real? She's just experienced – _lived_ – one dream after another, dreams that were almost memories. Is this a dream too? She presses down on the mattress experimentally: yes, it's a feather mattress, not unlike the one she slept on all the years she was growing up in her father's castle. There are no bed springs here.

And no Rumple, either.

Belle gives herself permission to cry, then. She doesn't really have much choice.

When the storm of weeping is over she gets out of bed and washes her face and bosom, and behind her ears, with water from the ewer and basin that have been left on the dresser for just this purpose. The water feels as real as the ewer in her hand. She must be back in the land in which she was born, and in the town she remembers ending up in last night, after Regina undid the curse and took Storybrooke with it.

She never expected to find herself back here. Not ever. But then, she never expected to… She can't finish the sentence. She _won't_ finish the sentence.

There's nothing left of him now. Only memories. And dreams. And… And…

Belle lifts her left hand, half afraid that the ring will be gone when she looks, even though she can still feel the weight of it there on her third finger.

The ring looks exactly as it did when Rumple put it on her finger. Exactly the same…

Belle inhales sharply. Rumple changed the ring with his magic. Originally, it had looked quite different, an antique Regard Ring from the world without (much) magic, so by rights it should have been left behind when Storybrooke dissolved into nothingness. Or maybe it wasn't a true Victorian Regard Ring but something similar that had once belonged to someone from the Enchanted Forest, which, admittedly, could be said for most of the items in Mr Gold's shop.

But if that were true, the ring would have reverted to its original form when it returned here – and probably would have reverted to its original owner, as well. And yet it's still there on Belle's finger, and it's still her ring, the one that Rumple created for her with a swirl of purple magic.

Belle sniffs, but she doesn't let herself cry again. She's on the edge of something that feels too important to allow any distraction, even grief. She moves over to the window so that she can hold the ring up to the light and consider it some more. Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby again, and Diamond: they're all there, following each other along the curve of the golden band.

Rumple's gold.

Rumple's magic should have ended when he did. That's what happened with Pan's magic. The moment Pan was gone – and not just gone but _dead_ and gone – the power of his magic had disappeared as well, and she and the others had been freed from the spell that had kept them both frozen in place and forced to watch.

Rumple's magic hasn't ended, or at least this little bit of his magic hasn't. Does that mean that Rumple hasn't ended, too? Belle trembles at the thought. No one saw him die. He was still alive when he vanished in that shower of golden light.

She's not sure what to do with this information. It isn't enough to go on by itself. There's a slim possibility that Rumple may still be alive, but all she knows for sure is that he's not in Storybrooke. He could be in the Enchanted Forest somewhere, or in any one of the dozens of other realms he's told her about, or maybe a realm that no one in the Enchanted Forest has ever been to or even heard of before. Belle doesn't have the first idea of where to start searching. She needs more information. She needs… a book. The right book.

Belle almost smiles. She knows what she has to do now, and it's a task that she should be able to carry out better than anyone. She leans against the windowsill and looks out at the town square below, slowly coming to life as the day begins. Her eyes are wide open and she can see exactly where she's going.

The curtain flaps again in the morning breeze, but Belle's not frozen in place any more.


End file.
